Category / Faith

by Kevin

Easter 2017

It has been over five years and I am again brought back to N.T. Wright’s thoughts on Easter each time we gather to celebrate.

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death,” let alone, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die.” Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death.” No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven!

― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

How do we make His kingdom on earth as in heaven? By loving others. By caring for those in need. By campaigning for justice. By keeping your integrity. By taking care of the environment. By building hospitals and digging wells. By preaching, painting, singing, and sewing.

What we do with our lives in the now matters greatly because with them we are literally making earth more like heaven, or less like it.

by Kevin

What ‘A Child Called It’ Taught Me About Stories

I read a book called A Child Called It during Highschool.  It’s a first hand account written from someone who was beaten and starved as a child by his abusive mother and played torturous games with him, or at least that’s what the author says.  I didn’t really think twice about the story’s exact validity because the point of the story was about how terrifying and real child abuse is.  A few months ago I read an article about how the story is under suspicion of being exaggerated, profiting off of the abuse story, or completely false.  I don’t know if the guy made it all up, apparently one of his brothers says he did while another one says it was all real.  That is one of the scary realities of this situation, a lot of child abuse goes on and we don’t know about it.  His own brothers can’t even agree if it happened.

But the point is that whether this particular story is true or false, the message of the story is still valid…child abuse happens; it is real; it is terrifying.  So what does that have to do with Story?  Two things I’ve been pondering in my head for a bit were brought out while I was thinking about this.

  1. Just because a story isn’t real doesn’t mean the point of the story is worthless
  2. I think we need to look into a story before touting it as 100% factual reality

Many times I see stories get thrown around to simply illustrate an idea.  If the point of a story isn’t that it actually happened but that it makes you think, it being a reality or not shouldn’t phase you.  Maybe you have heard some of those famous cheesy chain mail letters about the student who countered his professor’s proof that God doesn’t exist or that God is evil(and sometimes the kid conveniently turns out to be Albert Einstein).  Or parts of the Old Testament seem to be more metaphor or Hebrew allegory than factual history(or so I’ve been told be people more versed in this area).  In either of these cases I have encountered a lot of hostile reactions in two opposite directions: 1) they assert that since the story is “just made up” then it is not worthwhile or, 2) they try to prove that isn’t made up, is factual history, and therefore worthwhile.  I think both of these approaches are incorrect in the sense that they both hinge its worth on whether the story is real or not.  The addition to the end of the student-challenging-his-professor story about the kid being Einstein is actually an addition to prove its worth.  Since the kid is Einstein, a very smart man that actually existed, the story must be real and therefore worthwhile.  But this addition hinges the story’s worth on the fact that it is a reality, problematic!

Worthwhile stories do not have to be true.  Take Lord of the Rings for example, Aragorn never actually existed but there is so much truth we can learn from them about our world, desires, doing what is right, and love.

by Kevin

Easter 2013

In the beginning of this year, I believe God taught me a very important lesson that I couldn’t have grasped by myself. About six months prior I remember swearing to myself that this particular experience could not make any sense, I would never understand, and it was stupid. Yet here I am now, thankful for my newly learned lesson. It’s hard not to see the mystical side of life when something used to hurt can now be used to heal. I’m not talking about a wound healing itself over time, but a wound provoking healing beyond what was initially damaged. Things that used to be signs of suffering, sadness, and loneliness can be used to help bring goodness, life, and hope.

Sometimes it is the little things that make it so evident to me that Heaven is actively crashing into, interacting with, and forever changing our world. But we aren’t just supposed to sit here and watch it happen either, we are called to grasp ahold of Heaven’s tendrils and help pull it in.

…left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Easter blog posts

by Kevin

Two More of My Favorite Christmas Songs

Since I had two posts about Christmas music, I felt I needed to close it out with a third and final one.  I have two songs this time!  This first song finishes the loose narrative my last two posts kinda-sorta-connected together on: 1) Israel(and us) craves for Emmanuel to come, 2) Emmanuel did come, and 3) because of this, everything has changed.

In Like A Lion(Always Winter) is also by Relient K and is about Narnia’s ill weather.  I think that it was supposed to be on the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie soundtrack.  If it wasn’t then I really think it should have been…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksDBJIpqV1k&w=420&h=315]

Personally, I love winter.  I love the colder weather.  I enjoy the rain(for the most part) or snow when visiting the mountains.  I enjoy Pumpkin Spice Lattes.  I really enjoy bundling up and reading a book by the fire or window during the rain.  But, like most things, usually near the end of it am ready for winter to end and spring to show through.  Narnia(prior to Lucy Pevensie stumbling through the wardrobe) has been suffering a one hundred year long winter but never Christmas.  Some of the animals living in Narnia did not know what spring or a Christmas was.  It was a foreign concept to them.  Something wasn’t right.  Note that winter is not bad or evil.  Winter is just one part of the cycle that comes then goes and is just as important as summer, but something had abused winter’s purpose.

And then Aslan returns and sets the world right.  The green grass returns, the leaves begin to grow, Narnia is returning to as it should be.  As it was intended to be.

That is what Jesus’ mission was, to facilitate the restoration of His creation.  Throughout His life we were shown what this meant.  What truly living as God’s creation looks like.  Christmas is such an important event because of what happened afterwards.  If nothing happened after Christmas, if nothing changed, or if Aslan returned but the witch and her winter continued, there is no reason to celebrate.  With Jesus’ death we were allowed passage back to connect with God, this was the answer to Israel’s cries of O Come O Come Emmanuel.

 

I’m sorry if you’re tired of Relient K(not sorry), but they wrote a really good Christmas album.  This last song is entitled Merry Christmas, Here’s To Many More.  I’m not going to write too much about this one, I think the lyrics and pretty straight forward.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE0s2cGVF10&w=420&h=315]

This last year hasn’t been the easiest for me.  A lot of changes, some ups, more downs, even more plateaus, and a whole lot of lets-just-get-through-this-Kevin.  When I sing I made it through the year and I did not even collapse, gotta say ‘Thank God for that’, I really mean it.  So here I am at Christmas, I made it!  Every year I think we all look back and think if we handled that we can handle anything, but it really sticks with you after a rough one.  I know I could not have gotten through this year without God shining through such great friends or family in my life(if you’re reading this then you probably fall under one of these).  He has provided me safe thoughts when I was alone, brilliant friends to hangout with, and a family to take care of me.  And He has promised me that He won’t leave.

So, from me to you, Merry Christmas and here’s to many more.

by Kevin

My Favorite Not-so-classic Christmas Song

I’m not 100% sure on the difference between Classic and NonClassic Christmas songs, but I know that O Come O Come Emmanuel is a Classic and I Celebrate The Day is not.  Nevertheless, it is one of my favorite Christmas songs.

Not much to stay about this song upfront, it is by Relient K and it is essentially a stream of thoughts concerning the first Christmas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsPFNY4Z5t0&w=420&h=315]

The song isn’t very deep, but I think it gets two things across;

  1. Many of the things that happened that first Christmas are a giant mystery.  I also wonder sometimes when Jesus knew of the gravity of what his birth meant.  Was it something He found out as He grew up?  Was something intrinsically within Him?  Or did He have a fully developed mine capable of understanding it all the moment His eyes opened?  I don’t know, these are things that seem like they can’t make any sense when something is fully God and man.  But what really matters is that Jesus was born.  And that is big news.  So big it changed this world forever.
  2. This is the reason we celebrate Christmas.  We celebrate the day that Jesus was born because it was the start of something.  It was the start of what Israel was begging for back in Assyria.

Emmanuel had come.  He had finally come!  And with Him here, since He had come as it was promised, we know what comes next.  Jesus’ birth was the beginning of our salvation.  Easter is where it all goes down, but Christmas is where it all started.  So I celebrate that day.

by Kevin

My Favorite Classic Christmas Song

It is that time of year again, Christmas music time!  I’m quite particular about listening to Christmas music throughout the year.  Every now and then I’ll listen to a Christmas song if it comes up on iTunes, but the closer it gets to December the more likely I am to skip it because it isn’t time yet.  As we all know, the correct time it is acceptable for Christmas music to start playing is anytime after Thanksgiving, and I always hold out until then.  I usually listen throughout December, past Christmas, and on till about the 7th of January.  There isn’t really another season with its own theme music(the recent attempt at a thanksgiving song doesn’t count), and all of the songs just make this time of year that little bit more special.

My favorite classic Christmas song is one by the name of O Come O Come Emmanuel.  A brief history: the song is translated from an older Ecclesiastical Latin text called Veni, veni, Emmanuel, written sometime between the 8th and 12th century, which was based upon the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14.

14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel(meaning God with us).

At this time, the nation of Israel was currently held captive by Assyria(I think) wondering how they could have come to this.  God’s chosen people had been beaten and overtaken.  This is not how it was supposed to be.  How will Israel escape its current setting and how can it possible get better?  It really is a depressing time, which I think sets the mood for the song.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Docmt1_MZVo?rel=0]

Its fairly short, the lyrics follow a very simple and similar structure, its a bit repetitive at times, but it is a song full of longing.

Israel knows of the existence of what they yearn for, but He is nowhere to be found.  They, and we, are in an agony that currently nothing on earth can satisfy.  Every verse is literally the begging for something greater to come and end their suffering; free us from being enslaved, lead us to the age to come, come back to us Lord.  The song never arrives to the time when Emmanuel does come.  Israel doesn’t get saved before the music ends.  Instead the verses all end with the hope that God will be with us someday and we are to rejoice in that.

Perhaps that is why I like it, because at its core it isn’t necessarily a Christmas song.  It is a song about us in the present day, still struggling in the same places as Israel way back in the Old Testament.

Today we are awaiting the very same Jesus to come and redeem us.

by Kevin

How Should We Deal With Loud and Hurtful People?

Has Christianity effectively been ruined for others by Christians not following many of Christ’s teachings them(our)selves but brutally attacking others for doing the same?  I understand that there are many Christians who don’t do this, and that’s great.  But I think the problem is that the Christians that do purposely seek attention while doing it(in their mind they think it is a good thing…I guess).  Should we be seeking attention and disown these actions in response?

I feel like our actions/speech should be much harsher for Christians doing that rather than for some random person breaking Christ’s example they might not even adhere to.

by Kevin

Easter 2012

For this year’s Easter post I’ll leave you with a quotation from a recent book I read.

The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it…). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.

― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

My previous Easter posts if you’re interested.

by Kevin

What is Sacred?

I saw this on the Colbert show a couple days ago.  I thought the Harvard professor’s ideas were interesting.  I also thought it was interesting seeing Colbert talk about his faith, almost breaking character for a bit. If you didn’t know he is a Sunday school teacher.  Oh, what I would give to sit in on a Bible lesson from Colbert…

Sean Dorrance Kelly-Sean Dorrance Kelly believes that we’ve lost the notion of what’s sacred in our existence (06:48)

I don’t think that it means you can’t literally EVER laugh at something or it loses the sacredness(?). But laughing as in ridiculing it for being what it is. Laughing at something funny/ironic is different than ridiculing something to destroy its image.  I think there is a middle ground here, satire is a genius way of getting a point across.  And I love to laugh at satire.

by Kevin

Easter Redux

Easter has always baffled me. Not why we celebrate it, but how it happened. I know God resurrected, but that means that God had to die. God died. Now that is weird to think about. The Being that created everything died. Was there no God for three days? How does that work!?

This God-Man or Man-God…this Thing that is the Supernatural mixed with the natural…this Thing that is the Deity infused with flesh broke the rules of this world. It broke the rules of our world by entering and later broke the rules of our curse-death.

Adam/Eve cursed us all from that bite. You can’t really blame them though, how can you comprehend the impact of something that you have never experienced on an entire race? They didn’t know what death or sin were. But they caused it, and it has been our curse that has separated us from God. But God had a plan, to break this curse. How it happened, like I said, I don’t fully understand. It has some logic to it. To sin means death, and someone has to pay for that sin. So logically, if one who hasn’t done anything wants to atone for that sin, they can. But how can God atone for sin? God is perfect. God can’t die. God can’t have anything to do with sin.

Maybe that’s what broke the curse of death. It tried to claim something it couldn’t. Death had been afflicting humans one by one, so God placed Himself within a human and death couldn’t handle it. Jesus wasn’t an applicable parameter for death to take. It choked. Death broke. God finally upset the curse that satan tricked Adam into placing upon us. Now there is a way out of death, through Jesus, and Him alone.

He broke this curse, this cycle. He has beaten our captor. He has reclaimed us.

God brought us the cure-His one and only Son.

Is it wrong that I am so proud of that analogy of God breaking death’s parameters?  It is very computer sciencey, death being a function that accepts a MortalBeing as a parameter and when you try giving it an ImmortalGod that implements MortalBeing it breaks and throws OmgWhatJustHappenedException. It makes sense to me.

Death Broke, which means that sin is no longer an issue for us.  Sin no longer being an issue for us allows God to interact with us as He intended.  Our relationship with God finally being restored we can gather our self-worth not through our intelligence, not through how much money we make, and not through how attractive we are but through our intrinsic value of being solely created/fulfilled by God.  Since we can view ourselves as worth so much more than what this world can give us, we can see others in the same light, we can fix our relationships with other people; we must love others if we know they are a creation like us. Because of these three relationships being restored through Christ, our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with each other, we can begin to do God’s work in this world and prepare for Christ’s return to finally restore the rest of His creation. I mean, if He has done an amazing job on the first three what makes you think he won’t make good on his promise for the fourth?

I can’t wait to experience the hike to the Bridge to Nowhere in a perfect, curse free creation–as God intended it to be experienced.